The Register published an article about software licenses and their implications.
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Well, the author certainly has some points.
But there are developers and software companies that distribute great software without being greedy: e.g. Serif with the Affinity programs, Benny Kjær Nielsen with MailMate.
I don't know of any free software that even comes close. Therefor I would say: It depends.
EDIT:
Not to forget: The people from DeepL.com. Way better than Google translations or any other translation tool that I know. I’m so happy to use their service when I'm writing here while I'm too tired to write in English!
O wait! We're in a FileMaker forum: @MonkeybreadSoftware with the MBS plugin … 
And there are more examples that I use.
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I read the article, and I don't get the point for writing it.
It isn't better to buy commercial software because you can't buy software.
Well, nothing new here, it has always been the case.
No, the real reason that companies rarely open up the source code of their obsolete products is much simpler.
It's simple embarrassment. Shame at its poor quality.
Really ! Companies don't open their source code because they paid a lot to develop it, and they will not give it for free to the competition.
But on the flip side, while commercial vendors have a keen interest in concealing flaws and defects from you, suppliers of open stuff that is free of charge don't. So you will often find better documentation, better help and better support, more informative error messages, and friendlier, more welcoming communities of users who actively want to help you.
This is a total non sense. Better documentation, help, and support for free products ??? Sorry, but all that costs money and the product is free. Most of the time, these free products are supported by a community.
Speaking of lies, let's talk about open source Office applications that states a perfect compatibility with MS Office, is it the truth ?
Looks to me that this guy is angry about software companies. Would he feel better going back to using paper and a pencil ? I wouldn't.
Some software companies can't be trusted, or provide offers you have to say no to. But it's not all of them.
Yeah, it is written in a ranty style. Many people who do not specialise in sw development or licensing/purchasing of sw licenses are simply not aware of these facts. No news to the members of this forum but valuable information for many people.
Not sure about that. The way he talks about custom software will put everyone out of business. This guy is frightening people with his opinions, and since these people are not knowledgeable about software development, the will take the worst decisions for their businesses.
How come The register published such an article is unbelievable.
I think this is what journalists call an opinion piece.
Opinions are not facts. Just think about Trump's opinions...
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FOSS has no barrier to entry, so it is possible to find many examples of poorly developed software. However there are so many excellent FOSS products that you cannot dismiss them. @rivet recently recommended Shottr. (It may not be open source, but it is free).
Interactive GUI apps are only one part of the story. Apache and Nginx are both FOSS, and between them power up to 60% of the public web space. FOSS Unix and Linux have been huge drivers of development because they are FOSS. And no-one can complain about lack of documentation from apache, nginx, or any of the major *nix OS.
And finally, there are code libraries, hosted by BitBucket, GitHub, and many other specialist repositories. The ECMA-script/Javascript libraries are particularly useful for our use because they can be incorporated into FileMaker solutions via the web viewer.
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The top programming languages are FOSS. This includes C# and Swift.
Many FOSS products thrive and some are building blocks of proprietary software.
Though, FOSS and proprietary projects can fail, there are plenty success stories.